Worcester addicts react to news of bad heroin on streets

Sunday

Aug 10, 2014 at 6:00 AMAug 10, 2014 at 7:20 AM

WORCESTER — At 44 years old, sometimes Kim wants to die — and sometimes she can only credit God for the fact that she's alive. These days she's worried that the heroin she can't live without will kill her.

By Kim Ring TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER — At 44 years old, sometimes Kim wants to die — and sometimes she can only credit God for the fact that she's alive.

These days she's worried that the heroin she can't live without will kill her.

The slim brunette sat on a curb not far from the bush she sleeps under and the abandoned house where she feeds stray cats in Main South. Her hands moved constantly. She smoothed a palm over the track marks in her arm and lamented about how the rates for the tricks she still tries to turn have bottomed out as the heroin has taken a toll on her body, ruining her looks. By her own estimates, she's made over $1 million prostituting herself since she was 17, and most of it was spent on getting high.

On this night she was sick — dope-sick because she hadn't used all day even though she had a needle and could easily have scored some heroin.

"I've been calling but there's no beds," she said of her efforts to get into treatment. "I wanna get clean . . . I've had sobriety, I want it back. I want it bad."

About a week ago, Kim got some dope as part of her daily routine.

It was before three bodies were found in a city apartment dead from, police suspect, bad heroin. It was before the body count sharply rose for the month, ticking toward double digits just a few days into August. It was before Worcester officials began warning users to stay away from the heroin, that some bad stuff was on the streets and it was killing people.

That Saturday, Kim stuck the needle in her arm on the side street she calls home. The needle was still in her arm when an officer named Josh found her, near death, and called for help.

Seven doses of Narcan brought her back. Surely it must have been some bad dope?

"I think it was really good," she said, echoing what many addicts are saying now about the seemingly deadly batch of heroin in the city: They want it.

Kim doesn't, though. Not today, anyway, and not anymore if she can get some help.

She knows she can't trust anyone because someone is cutting heroin with something bad. It happens, she explained, because sometimes the dope is weak and dealers add things to make it stronger. Greed drives them, she said. The need to make money from drug sales overrides the chance they may kill someone, and people such as Kim, whose self-worth barely exists, are often willing to take that chance.

She said she was using just enough to manage the detox she was going through because she's afraid to die from the bad dope and afraid to be any sicker without it.

"I feel like bugs are crawling out of my skin," she said, adding that she'd been vomiting, shaking, hot and cold. "It's an ongoing process and I need to be in a medical facility . . . I just have to get through one day."

Her recent brush with death left her with an image of her daughter looking over her in a casket and that is haunting her, driving her toward sobriety.

Almost anyone could be just one needle-stick away from being Kim, and if she could have a perfect life, it wouldn't include fancy cars or Gucci bags, she said. It would be a world where there was a roof over her head and she had a job as "a productive member of society" doing outreach with addicts and prostitutes and maybe people like Crystal, who's simply an earlier version of herself.

The officers who walk the beat in Main South know everyone — addicts, shop-keeps, bar owners and barflies, homeless folks and longtime residents. They know first and last names. Horns honk and there are friendly waves.

They get a warm greeting at a local pub when they step inside to be sure all is well. They wander through local parks and check on children playing in a dusty lot. The little girls say, "Hi, Mr. Cop," as they pass. A few minutes into their shift, they arrest a woman wanted on a warrant for shoplifting, then they provide backup for other officers who are trying to quiet a sobbing father as the Department for Children and Families staff remove his children from their home.

These days they also call EMT's or paramedics to dispose of needles in a sharps container. And they keep their eyes open for those who might fall victim to an overdose.

People in the area all have something to say about the heroin, and amongst those who once used and are now clean, the consensus is that someone is purposely cutting the drug with a toxic additive meant to kill. The one responsible might be doing it for kicks.

Outside 765 Main St., Carlos Rodrigues talked about his friend, Leonard, who gave a commitment at a narcotics anonymous meeting on a Thursday and was dead from the bad heroin by Monday.

"He was clean for a while," Mr. Rodrigues said shaking his head. "But an addict is an addict."

Just down Main Street, Crystal was looking for her boyfriend. He's more than twice her age — she's 22 — and he pays for the heroin she easily transitioned to after using Percocet for a while.

She hasn't turned to prostitution, though Kim would likely predict that will come.

Two officers on foot beat told her when she asked that they haven't seen her boyfriend. They encouraged her to get clean. They can see her swiftly declining health.

"You're young," they told her. "Get away from this stuff. You can do better. Surround yourself with better people."

She has a 2-year-old but the girl lives with her ex. The desire for heroin has now outweighed the maternal instinct we like to believe is so strong. The drugs have left her homeless. Her father died a few years ago and she moved here from Woburn with her then-boyfriend who introduced her to prescription drugs.

In an alleyway she revealed the needle she always carries. She shot up in the morning and she keeps her habit under control by using a $20 gram bag of heroin daily, she explained. The news of deadly heroin doesn't worry her at all. She's got it figured out, uses the same dealer every time and limits herself.

Crystal picked at the blue nail polish on her nails and bit at the edges of her fingers. Scars on her arm detail the history: She was a cutter but now's she's stopped.

There are newer scars forming, these from needles that she won't stop using.